Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Embassy crawlers, kidnappers, Butchers and Boss Tweet…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
15 May 2019
🖨️ Print Article
standoff at the Venezuelan embassy
Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy

“The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.”
— Article 22 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.

Whistles blowing, sirens blaring through bullhorns,
strobe lights flashing to pounding, banging rhythms
It must be the embassy medieval thugs mistook
for a butcher shop—or the one thugs entered to
kidnap towering truth-teller?

Instead, evening’s infested with
pot and pan-banging blue arm bands, Assault-Right
hipsters with Hitler haircuts; choreographed from
The War House and Capitalist Hill.

Ordinarily, big banner headlines splash
Post, Times, Wall Street Journal:
Americans Holed up in Foreign Embassy
surrounded by secret police blocking food,
medicine, supplies; shutting off electricity,
assaulting, arresting peaceful protestors:
Replacing rule of law with Law of Jungle;
Violating Vienna Convention, abdicating
responsibility
to
protect…

Ordinarily, Fox-box foot-soldiers/State Department
stenographers are on the ground grindin’— 24/7
with talking heads hopping mad—shit-fit, send-
in-the Marines-mad—for Boeing’s war of the week
versus strongman who became the wrong man!
Rogue state with redacted 1st and 4th amendments,
we wait for wet, cold, Wikileak words: “Live from New
York, it’s Saturday…”

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Our poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performning artist, educator and an oficial of the National Writers Union.
Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

Venezuela

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Black August for the Pendleton 2
    Too Black
    Black August for the Pendleton 2
    16 Aug 2023
    Black August is an important month of political education, but it should not solely be about the past. The continued existence of a mass incarceration state targeting Black people…
  • BAR Book Forum: Musab Younis’s Book, “On the Scale of the World”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Musab Younis’s Book, “On the Scale of the World”
    16 Aug 2023
    This week’s featured author is Musab Younis. Younis is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His book is On the Scale of the World…
  • RFK, Jr. Exposes His Right-Wing Tendencies Again, This Time On Abortion
    Jacqueline Luqman
    RFK, Jr. Exposes His Right-Wing Tendencies Again, This Time On Abortion
    16 Aug 2023
    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made and then tried to walk-back comments which supported banning abortion in some circumstances. But he's stuck with his own words and the supposedly anti-establishment…
  • Peruvian De Facto Minister of Defense Travels to DC Solidifying US Militarization of Country
    Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Peruvian De Facto Minister of Defense Travels to DC Solidifying US Militarization of Country
    16 Aug 2023
    Peru's coup regime enhances its alliance with the U.S. with visits to Washington and arms supplies to Ukraine.
  • You Can’t Project Power When the World Knows You Are Weak
    Dr.Wilmer J. Leon, III
    You Can’t Project Power When the World Knows You Are Weak
    16 Aug 2023
    Every empire falls and the fantasy of American exceptionalism doesn't exempt the U.S. from inevitable decline. Yet the failing hegemon behaves as though it still controls events, and…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us